


sons are like birds

by alynshir



Series: mahariel march 2020 [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, It's not important in this fic, Kieran learns to shapeshift, Morrigan learns to teach, Mother-Son Relationship, also, but you all should know, mahariel march, morrigan isn't straight, this counts as mahariel march bc my kieran is a mahariel. so there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:47:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23100427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alynshir/pseuds/alynshir
Summary: Patience is a virtue, and virtues, as Morrigan realizes, require practice.
Relationships: Kieran & Morrigan
Series: mahariel march 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1651786
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	1. mother, remember

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from iron and wine's song "upward over the mountain" :]

"I want to learn," Kieran asks you - no, tells you, on no uncertain terms -, and you taste no on your tongue before you bite it back. 

You have said no to this all of your life, to anyone and everyone. You have denied the world this part of you because it is the only part of you that you have ever felt in your bones - an ironic thought, in itself, since your bones have always been conditional, and so have you, in all that you are and all that you've been and all that you will be. You were born to be conditional, you've always thought, always known, always felt; you were born already becoming something other than what you had been, and never once have you settled in a skin that felt completely your own - no skin ever could be, either, because you were not born to stagnate, like how the world asks of its people.

(You never could, anyway, even when you wanted to, and you've tried in your years to be human, to render yourself palatable and perceptible, you've tried so hard to keep your hands and your heart from curling into other things, but you never could then, and now that you don't have to, you never would.)

Although, you suppose nothing has ever truly stopped you, save yourself. Oddly, it is the one thing your mother ever truly understood about you, and perhaps that's what makes all of this harder to figure out; this is the one thing you've ever had about yourself that has always been good enough.

(Something, small and still growing but no less alive, snarls in the back of your mind with a voice that belongs to no man and with bared teeth that belong to no monster. It tells you that you have always been good enough, you have never needed anyone to tell you otherwise, it tells you that you have never needed anyone and you are as much as your potential - and that's all you've ever been made of, truly. It’s something you've always taken such pride in, your potential.)

"I want to learn," Kieran says again, and he looks up at you with eyes like yours, golden, ever-curious, ever-questioning.

It is simply...odd, the thought. and maybe it shouldn't be; you've taught him many things, you've taught him to look at the world and to see it through his own eyes and you've taught him to be looked at and what it is to be seen and to be heard, you've taught him what it is to trust and be trusted and you've taught him what it is to be fierce and to be fair. The problem, if there is one at all, is that you've taught him to ask and that you've taught him to get what he wants come hell or high water, and in that way, you've created your own dilemma. And perhaps maybe it shouldn't be a dilemma at all, or even a problem; what is it, you wonder, to teach him something, just another thing you can add to the list of answered questions that you know he'll never be done asking? Maybe it should pose no issue, but.... to try and put words to what you do, to try and explain in vowels and consonants the way that are, to do such a thing, you've always said to yourself in years past, to do such a thing would make it profane, you think, to do such a thing would take it from you and leave you feeling hollow, leave you feeling misunderstood. How can you articulate a thing like that - a thing that has never simply been one thing to understand at all, a thing of constant light and shadow and sinew and movement, a thing that slithers and crawls and climbs through your veins and calls you home, a thing that makes you impatient, makes you uncomfortable, makes you angry and makes you scared and makes you so incredibly alive?

But this is your son, your _son_ , your son who you know like how you know the sun rises and who you trust more than anything you've ever been, this is your son who from the moment he was born has never been anything but unconditional to you, this is your son whose soul knows more than his small shoulders ever should, and this is your son who owes you nothing and who never will and yet he is taking your hand and saying, "I want to understand you," and saying "I want to be like you". What a notion, indeed.

(It helps that you've raised him too well, and he's had you and everyone he's ever met wrapped around his little finger since he has had any fingers to speak of. _How unfortunate_ , you think, with nothing but fondness.)

"I want to learn,” Kieran says once more, looking up at you with eyes like yours, eyes shining with possibility and with potential.

(That way his eyes shine, you think, is with more potential than you've ever had - more potential than you, and you were born to anticipation, _born_ to potential. You can't help but be a little proud, as you always are of him. You wonder, not for the first time, and not for the last, how it was so easy for your mother to dismiss you, to disparage, when it is like breathing to you to be proud of your son... Yes, you wonder, but truth be told, that particular ease is one of the very few things that you hope, and one of the very few things that even beyond hope, that you _know_ you will never truly understand. You may hunger to understand the world, you may crave knowledge long since lost and locked away, but...in this, you have no appetite. None at all.)

"Yes," you say to your son, in words, “Yes, I will teach you.” (And _yes_ , you say to your son in another language, in a quiet language few know and none speak, in the way you smooth his hair and cup his chin for a moment, _you can have this of me, because if anyone deserves this of me, it is you.)_


	2. mother, forgive me

You try not to think of this as a bad idea.

It _isn’t_ a bad idea, after all, not in _theory_ , but in practice, you’ve never felt so full of regret. And it’s not that he’s doing anything wrong, exactly. He has listened to what you’ve said, and you’ve said so much; you’ve explained the fundamentals of magic being channeled inward instead of outward, you’ve explained that to see is to understand and once you can channel your magic inward and understand, you will be able to change. It hasn’t worked, though - magic has always been elusive and coy for him, and you find whittling down what you are into something procedural, to be a failed exercise in both eloquence and patience. Maybe you’re not doing something right.

But it isn’t your fault either, you think, frustrated, as you stand with your back to the tree, your arms folded across your chest, the shadows growing long through the forest, as your your son sits in front of you with his legs criss-crossed and his fingers curling into the dirt, his little brow furrowed - no, it isn’t your fault, it is simply that you’re not even sure this is something you can teach, and you weren’t sure about it from the beginning, but you’d tried, and it hadn’t worked, and you should have known better than to try. You cross your arms tighter. It’s not his fault either, but it’s certainly no fault of yours that this isn’t working.

“I don’t get it,” he says, not for the first time, and looks up at you, his mouth a crooked, irksome line, “Explain it again.”

You can’t help but huff a little bit, reluctant, and immediately you want to kick yourself, because how old are you that your petulance can hold your patience hostage? It’s just, though, you think, as your son raises a skeptical eyebrow at you - an eyebrow that you know you’ve taught him perhaps better than anything else, you realize with enough amusement to smooth the building pressure in your chest -, it’s just that there have never been words for this sort of thing.

You were not taught with such things; such a thought is nearly laughable, to imagine your mother, of all people, sitting down with you and explaining in words made to be understood and made to be taken to heart. No, your mother taught you to reach for magic like she taught you to reach for anything: she taught you to take, to catch it and breathe it in like smoke, she didn’t teach you with conversation but with consequence, she taught you to teach yourself at your own expense and you remember when you used to think that was how things should be, you remember that like you remember the break in your ribs when you were barely what people who see you call a woman and you remember that like you remember your mother watching you struggle to breathe with no pity in her eyes, in her eyes so cold any remnants of hope you’d held close had rotted away, you remember the way your chest burned and your heart raced and you remember her voice, _no one will help you, why should anyone help you, why would anyone, you must help yourself, girl, or you will die and next time there will be no one there to care_ -

“Mother,” Kieran says, your son says, and his voice brings you back to the present, and you realize that your hand has gone to your ribs, that you’re holding close an injury that has long since healed. You look at your son, then, who has gotten to his feet, who has moved a step towards you, eyes wide, to see if you're alright, and you have never had it in you to be truly defensive around him, but that doesn't mean you can't keep him far, far away from such a memory, such an injury, such a life.

As you let your hand drop from the phantom ache in your chest, your son looks up at you. “What’s wrong,” he asks, and the way he looks very nearly guilty makes your heart sink into the mire of your twisting stomach, and you see the words forming on his lips, an apology for nothing, and no, no, this is _not_ the lesson you want to teach him. You will not let this be what he remembers of you, you will not let him feel weight for your younger worries, it is not fair. 

( _Nothing is fair,_ your mother would laugh - she would, and she has; you remember her saying so many times at your protests -, _nothing is fair and life is not fair and he should learn it now so he will not be surprised when the world disappoints_. You shake the shadow of her away. Perhaps life is not fair, but you are no thing to be predicted, you are no one to be caged by the trappings of cynical old women.)

“Nothing is wrong,” you say, getting down on one knee in front of him, letting your voice soften into the shape you take that belongs only to him, “but understand. I did not learn this way. ‘Tis hard to teach something I have never been truly taught.”

Kieran hesitates for a moment, looking at you as if he’s not sure whether he believes that nothing is wrong, and truth be told, on a weaker day perhaps you wouldn’t be sure and perhaps your broken bones of old would ache and perhaps you would be bitter, then, perhaps you would be angry and tired, but today is not a weaker day, and even if it were, today you have decided to steel yourself. “How did you learn?” he asks, and sits down on the ground in front of you. “You’ve never told me. You teach me from books, and then lessons.”

“Magic is easier to teach that way,” you say, sitting down beside him, curling the grass beneath you in your fingers, “especially for a boy as smart as you.” He smiles a little at that, sheepish. “But what I do is different.”

“You’re a shapeshifter,” Kieran says, tilting his head. “That’s magic, isn’t it? You’re changing shape.”

“Yes,” you agree, “but ‘twas something I was born doing, and something that came to me easily.” You bump his shoulder gently with yours, smirk at him. “Like how sometimes you know things that you shouldn’t know.” He grins, then, crooked, and you see a shimmer of something ancient, something mischievous in his eyes. “You are special in many ways, but in that way, you have been since you were born. Before you were born, even. For me, that was what shapeshifting was. My mother did not teach it to me.”

“But she could do it too,” Kieran says, doesn’t ask, and you feel a twinge in your stomach simply at the notion of your mother and your son in the same sentence. “She could turn into a dragon.”

“That she could. ‘Tis likely that she is the reason I was born to such an ability.” It’s the logical truth, you know that, but still, saying it feels wrong, somehow. Something bristles inside your chest; you wish you could shed all that you are that she made you, sometimes, and you wish you could take away from yourself everything your mother had ever had a hand in. You remind yourself, though, not for the first time by far, that you are who you are not because of your mother but because of yourself, that no matter who else claims you, you belong truly only to yourself.

(Well… yourself, and then one more, perhaps. You remember the day as if it wasn’t over a decade ago, and change had been in the air, then, too. Fall always had that way about it. You don’t remember where you were in particular, or whether the stars had been shining or hidden, only that you had been so happy to finally be free of over-encumbrance, of being trapped in a human form that changed without your permission, made you sick and made you ache and made you angry and made you so, so incredibly _maudlin,_ which had been the worst of it by far, but then it had been over, and you had held him to the light for the first time, and he had reached for it with fingers so small you had been in disbelief, hadn’t believe such a thing was possible and it had been so very strange, then, to feel that snarling thing that lives in your chest ease, to feel it curl around the two of you, to feel that you were not just yourself anymore but something else, and... You look at your son. He says he’s grown so since then, adamant to be older and wiser, and you know he has, but you can still see that he is still just as he was then in the ways that matter - in his curiosity, in the roses of his cheeks, the sunlight that shines golden in his eyes, the way his hair still tousles like feathers in the back. Ah. Yes, you belong to yourself, and then one more.)

“What’s the difference between shapeshifting magic, and… magic, magic?” Kieran asks you, and the thought gives you pause. You flex your fingers against the ground, knotting your fingers in the grass.

“Magic,” you say, “as I understand it, is a tool to be used. It is an energy one can harness, that you can draw from this world and from the Fade. It is the wood that fuels, and I am the fire that burns. Magic is something you can read and write of. It is a tool, and a skill. Shapeshifting is not about what I can do, or how I can use it. It is about who I am. Magic is around us. Shapeshifting,” you say, and you reach out, gently tapping his chest, “is right here. It _is_ magic - technically. But it is not about the arcane knowledge, or the amount of power you can gather. It is about seeing the world, and letting yourself become it. It is a…” You pause, searching for words that you haven’t already used, used to less success. “I do not cast a spell when I change my form. I _am_ it.”

Kieran is quiet for a moment, thoughtful. “So when you do magic, you bring it inside, from around you, but when you shapeshift, the magic comes from inside, and doesn’t leave.” 

You nod. He’s quiet for a time, lost in some distant battle of thoughts visibly waging, and you are quiet too, and you let what he spoke of, that inner _something_ wash over you, directing it nowhere but allowing the humanity you have held still for so many years, ease ever so slightly in the auburn evening light. You will never know exactly what that looks like - when you let yourself be a little more amorphous -, but a gentle breeze whispers not against you but through you, through your skin-that-isn’t-quite-skin, your muscles and bones that you have allowed for a moment to be not quite so much of what they were. It always helps - whatever you are, whatever your mistakes and your worries. It always helps. 

(Your mother never had known - or if she had, she’d never said anything - that the ribs you’d called yours back then had never healed, exactly, but had simply become something else until you could breathe properly again. Many creatures had ribs, you’d thought, bones that wouldn’t break, bones that would keep you’d safe, that’s what you’d thought while gasping for breath back then, why could you not be one of them? So you’d become one. You’d never properly learned to heal, just shape, simply change.)

“Can you show me?”

You come back, settling back into this version of yourself, and look to Kieran, who is watching you with a gleam in his eyes that you recognize not by look but by feeling, by knowing the burning curiosity in his eyes because it was yours first.

“I want to see it,” Kieran says. “I see it sometimes, just when you do it on your own. But I want to see it.”

“Watching me will not truly teach you,” you tell him. “I am not what you are trying to learn to become. For you to learn, I think...you should look at the world around you.” You gesture around him. “You see the world, and you think you know it. But you know it as what you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Try to see it for what it is, to something else. Not with your eyes, but with the eyes of something else.” Your mind finds itself wandering, into the sunsetting, into the forest. It is not _so_ different, you think, from where you grew up. Here, you notice the sun shines clearer, though, even when it’s fading through the leaves. The Wilds you remember drank the sunlight like a dying man, leaving only drops behind for you. “What is it like to be something else? What is it like to leave the shape you are in, behind?” 

You are quiet, and so is he, and for a time, you sit together, listening to the evening begin to tune, the night songbirds clearing their throats and warming up, grander than any Orlesian orchestra. “When you learn this,” you ask him, your voice soft, “what do you most wish to take the form of?”

Kieran thinks about this for a long time, looking out into the world, listening to it in a way you’ve never seen him do before. Your son has always been able to see beyond what he should; he has always had an eye belonging to something ancient, something beautiful, but he has never listened with such intensity, with such thought. You watch him, wordless, thoughtless.

“A bird,” he says finally, decidedly and you raise an eyebrow at him.

“There are many birds. Pick one.”

Kieran gives you a look, one you know because you’ve felt it yourself, a look of knowing and of fond exasperation, a look beyond his years, perhaps, but one that makes you smile even so.

"I'll start with ravens.”


	3. mother, don't worry

“There,” you say, fighting to keep the smile off of your face;  _ patience, patience,  _ “You’ve gotten this far. You can do it.”

The blackbird on the lowest branch of the blackthorn tree tilts his head at you, skeptical. You quirk an eyebrow at him; a challenge. “Do  _ not _ give me that look, young man. You have the ability. You have been practicing. You  _ are  _ ready.”

The blackbird shuffles a few steps to one side of the branch, then to the other, ruffling his feathers doubtfully. You put a hand on your hip, inclining your head ever so slightly. “I will count to three. On three.” The blackbird twitters at you, a few questions that he’s asked a thousand times before, and then huffs a long, nervous minor note.

“One.”  _ He has this. He’s strong. He’s been listening, and he’s been watching, and he’s strong and intelligent and he has this. _

“Two.”  _ What if he doesn’t have this? He has everything he needs, but it doesn't always matter. One can have everything they need to do something incredible, and yet fear can stop one in their tracks. What if he doesn’t do it?  _ He takes a deep breath, and so do you. You meet his eyes, and he’s terrified, but beyond that, you see resolve, brighter than you’ve ever seen.

_ It doesn’t matter. If he doesn’t do it this time, he will do it next time. He has this, whenever he is ready to.  _

“Three -”

Your heart leaps into your chest, into your throat, your breath catches - and he leaps! He leaps! The blackbird pushes off of the lowest branch of the blackthorn tree, his feathers wine-dark against the pale blossoms, he throws his wings wide and he leaps! You cannot stop the smile spreading across your face, bigger than it’s ever been, and you reach out your hand to him, curving your finger so he has somewhere safe to land, “Yes! You’re doing it! Flap your wings, try to stay in the air, good,  _ good!”  _

And it is more than good, truly, it is incredible - he is  _ flying _ , blossoms of red shining bright in the afternoon on the backs of his dark wings, treading air like it’s water, and you can see he’s struggling to catch his breath, his wings thrashing unevenly against the air, but he is doing it, he is doing it and you cannot stop smiling, 

(pride has always been your downfall, but here you are, reveling in it like it’s light, and your son, the sun)

“Come towards me now,” you say, waving to him with your other hand, “Lean forward, let the air carry you here to me,” and he pushes forward, straining with each beat of one wing and then the other, but he tears through the air and falls onto your outstretched hand! 

You let out a laugh as you feel him shift back with a burst into a red-faced, exhausted little boy, collapses into your arms, and you wrap him up in them, hugging him so tightly, and he’s laughing too, you hear him against your shoulder, “I did it, Mother, I did it!”, and you kiss his hair and you kneel down in front of him, clutching his hands in yours,

“You  _ did it,”  _ you say, grinning, and oh, you are so proud, you have never been prouder of anything in your life - nothing you have ever done has made you feel so full of light as this, and….

“I’m like you now,” your son says, his voice ragged, his face flushed, eyes bright.

_ Oh. _

You feel your lips trembling, first, and your eyes fill with a fire you’ve rarely ever let burn, rarely ever felt safe enough to.  _ Oh.  _ Your son, your Kieran. 

(You'd...known that you had been graced with something rare, something incredible, you'd known that since the moment he was born, but in this moment, you think, you finally understand how lucky you are. And perhaps it's more than that. As your son, your Kieran looks at you, out of breath, looking to you for guidance, for encouragement, for praise, trusting you with all of the wonder and the potential he is made of, you realize that you're _grateful._ So...incredibly grateful.)

“No,” you say, your voice breaking, your smile hurting your cheeks with a joy sweeter than sunrise. You reach up, cupping his face, smoothing a sweaty lock of feather that hasn’t quite changed back into hair and tucking it behind his ear, “No. You are not like me, Kieran. You are _better_ than me. And this is just the beginning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope u enjoyed :D

**Author's Note:**

> pls leave a comment telling me what u think!! literally the comments i get make my day so so much and make me want to write more !!
> 
> also come hang out with me on da twit @witchesgonewild !!


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